§ 1.1 Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns organizing information. In particular, the present invention concerns categorizing terms, phrases, documents and/or term co-occurrence clusters with respect to a taxonomy and using such categorized documents and/or clusters.
§ 1.2 Background Information
A “taxonomy” is a structured, usually hierarchical, set of categories or classes (or the principles underlying the categorization or classification). Taxonomies are useful because they can be used to express relationships between various things (referred to simply as “objects”). For example, taxonomies can be used to determine whether different objects “belong” together or to determine how closely different objects are related.
Unfortunately, assigning objects to the appropriate category or categories of a taxonomy can be difficult. This is particularly true if different types of objects are to be assigned to the taxonomy. Also, this is particularly true if attributes of the objects, used for categorization, can change over time, or if many objects are being added and/or removed from a universe of objects to be categorized. For example, Websites are continuously being added and removed from the World Wide Web. Further, the content of Websites often changes. Thus, categorizing Websites can be challenging.
In view of the foregoing, it would be useful to provide automated means for assigning objects (e.g., Websites), and possibly different types of objects, to appropriate categories of a taxonomy.